Author: Amy D'Annibale

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Prepare to Make Decisions

What do freedom and preparation have in common? Duh.

A Long Time Ago….

In a Career Far, Far, Away…

I learned about freedom.

Then, I learned about preparation.

Hey! How ya doin’? Are you all A-OK out there? I’m enjoying my long weekend. I listened to audiobooks and tuned in to the impeachment proceedings. That combination got me thinking about freedom. Freedom to act and even more, the need to be prepared.

As adults, with families and responsibilities, it often feels that like we don’t have freedom. We have responsibilities and obligations. The more of the trappings of the American dream we collect, the less free we believe we are. Education and opportunity turn into jobs, homes, families, and retirement funding – lots of stuff we don’t want to lose. In wanting to keep what we’ve earned, we lose perspective. Working starts to feel like a zero-sum proposition.

During my late twenties, I got to experience total freedom. My husband and I had just sold a business. At the time capital gains taxes were INSANE, so we didn’t get the big bankroll we expected. But, during the years of building our business, we’d practiced austerity at home. We needed only one minimum wage income to keep the lights on and things rolling, including our two cars and our utilities.

Given our frugal lifestyle, the proceeds from the sale of our business could support us for a long time. That meant I got the opportunity to work, basically anywhere, with the feeling that I could walk away, at any moment and find something comparable. No sweat.

Let me tell you, after the heroics of self-employment with a brick and mortar business and the mandate to show up and keep delivering, no matter how long it took or how hopeless things appeared, this feeling of nonchalance was incredible. At my job, an eight-hour day with a lunch break felt like child’s play and if I wanted to, I could walk away clean with no harm, no foul to my family.

In my happy, post-entrepreneurial state of sustainability, I felt bold, courageous. I got to be myself. I felt zero need to cowtow to anyone. I could speak my mind frankly. I didn’t have to worry about l office politics, people’s opinions, making ends meet, or really anything. I just had to show up, and do my job in the way that suited my personality.

It was exhilarating.

These were my typical thoughts at that time in life: “I’m working for me.” “We can live on one salary, so either of us can quit anytime.” “This is easy.” “I can’t believe people get paid for this.” “How can I do better?” “How can I do this faster?” “How cool would it be to figure that out?” “It’s time to go home already?” “I can’t believe I can walk away any time and be Just. Fine.” “I make less than anyone here, but I’m independently wealthy.” “I can do anything I want.” “I can leave any time.” “How can I help?” “How does that work?” “What else can I do to help the team?” “It’s time to go home already?” “This is great.” “I think I’d like to get another degree while I’m doing this. I have plenty of time.”

That experience taught me a lot about what fearlessness and a sense of expansive resources do to mindset. After years of seventy hour weeks, razor-thin margins, the fate of my family, and the jobs of a dozen employees riding on our ability to keep things running, the contrast was extreme.

Looking back, of course, things weren’t quite that amazing. I wasn’t yet thirty and I still felt like I had forever to create a retirement fund. Eventually, our savings would go away if we weren’t careful and a major medical catastrophe could have wiped everything out and set us on a very different course.

Doesn’t matter. What mattered was the mindset. That mindset was the greatest gift of all time. I experienced what it felt like to believe that I was totally, financially, free and independent, and at the same time, perfectly capable of working twice as hard at any moment. I experienced a total lack of a scarcity in my mindset and it was phenominal.

It also provided a comparison to help me understand when fear and scarcity are setting in.

Years later, when I needed to make a difficult decision at work, the impact of that difference was made clear to me.

I was asked to make a judgment call. There were lots of people with different opinions about what I should do. I felt a lot of internal pressure to make sure that I made the decision without any personal bias. I needed to know that my decision was best for my employer, not for me, not for my family.

Let’s be clear, my company supported me in this work in every way. But because I had experienced what it felt like to act and make decisions out of total freedom, I knew that my mind was far from that place. I understood that I needed to be willing not only to walk away from my job but to also believe we would be ok if I did. In order to be sure that my choice was unbiased I needed to be free of the fear of losing my job, fear of not finding another one, and fear of not being capable.

That clarity made the work much, much harder. At that time, I did believe I needed my job. I believed that I would never find another as perfect. I believed that nobody would hire me at that same pay and I that couldn’t survive independently from my job.

Talk about a problem. Before I could make my decision at work, I had to clean up my whole life. I wasn’t willing to make a decision until I was sure I could be unbiased and the clock was ticking.

Watching the folks in the Senate over the weekend, I wondered how many of them were in that same boat.

I remember the weekend before I made my decision. I dragged out all our finances. I took out all our bills. I laid everything out. I had to be willing to walk away from my job if my decision wasn’t in alignment with others. Not because my company was pressuring me. Remember, I had lots of support. I needed to be dead certain that my decision was made freely. I needed to be sure of my own clarity of mind, for me.

I worked numbers for hours, in pencil at our dining room table. By the time I was done, I was sure that if my husband kept his job and I could get a minimum wage job, we would survive. After all the self-inflicted pressure I’d been feeling, I almost welcomed the chance to go back to an hourly wage.

I spent the next day laying out my pros and cons. Late Sunday, I sent in my decision, feeling the strength that comes from knowing you’re making a choice for all the right reasons.

That taught me a lot. That experience was far more difficult than it needed to be because I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have my personal house in order. That weekend started a new phase in my life. I banished debt, one 0% credit card at a time. I prioritized savings and I expanded my network by volunteering and learning new skills. I made getting back to that independent state of mind a top priority.

Today, my thoughts are these: “I have everything I need to do what I need to.” “I’m ready for a new chapter.” “I’m 100% able to walk away at any time.” “My personal inventory is up to date.” “I know where I stand.” “What if this can be easy?” “How can I get better?” “How can I live on even less?” “Who can I help?” “I wonder what that’s about?” “I’m ready for whatever comes my way.” “It’s the end of the day already?” “What do I want to learn to do next?” “What does my team need?” “Where’s the popcorn?” “This is a tough puzzle.” “This is great.” “It’s the end of the day already?” “I’m on vacation until 8 am” “I love my job.”

Here’s the deal.

When I was struggling with my own feelings of fear and inadequacy, I had a net worth ten times what it was when I was in my twenties and feeling like the Queen of Everything. Less people were depending on me because our child was out on his own. I was in much better shape. But that wasn’t how I felt, and it wasn’t what I believed.

To this day, I still have never felt as free as I did that year after we sold our business. Too bad, but I have hope that I will. What I am sure of is I will never again have to put everything on hold to clean my personal house before I make a judgment call. I’m prepared. I have already accepted that my job will go away. One way or another, all of our jobs go away. We move on, even if we stay with the same employer.

So ask yourself, what work do you have to do on your personal inventory to be sure that you are 100% free to face anything work throws at you?

That – is your path to freedom.

And that? Is just good to know.

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Learn to Carve

What do digital transformation, skill gaps, and workload all have in common? They all require you to learn how to carve.

It’s Saturday at 2 pm and I’m still in my bathrobe. I’m working on my blog on the weekend. Surely there is nothing you can learn from me.

Are you still here? Well, all right. Here goes. Gartner says that in the next ten years constant upskilling will replace experience in importance in the workplace. CompTIA says that the ability of IT professionals to understand both technology and business is rising in the list of skill gaps that technology professionals need to be closing.

Beyond all that, workload and technical skill gap issues are still smokin’ hot for IT just as they have been for several years now. Oh, and by the way, your company still wants you to innovate, which means, you’re going to need some downtime for your brain so you can come up with new ideas that are all your own.

What does that mean? You better figure out how to do what you need to do, when you need to do it.

You better learn to carve – carve out personal time, carve in technical training and business training.

Did you just scream? You know I’m still in my bathrobe right?

Fortunately, I’ve been reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and marveling over the ways in which addiction can help with scheduling. Stop snickering. An all-nighter does have a way of clearing your calendar, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Among other things, he addresses these points: digital media and the attention economy have created a state of distraction which results in both an inability to focus and an activity void when we step away from it. To successfully disengage from that digital experience (think social media, surfing, news, and streaming) we have to plan what we are going to do instead. Quitting cold turkey on any behavior leaves us staring into an uncomfortable void and vulnerable to relapse. I’ve hammered on this before – you need to have something great to do in your time off, in order to let go of the emails, all the important work that never ends, and the distractions that chip away at our lives.

Cal Newport then delves into how to reclaim your leisure time. None of this is new info to people who follow this blog but what he does propose is a reverse calendar – plot carefully the time you allow for non-constructive leisure and thereby force yourself to fill the rest of your time with something better. In a word, carve out the best leisure you can. Leisure that gives you time to ponder and create just feels like you have more life in your life.

So let’s bring all that back to the office. You know you have to set aside specific chunks of the day to do focus work that makes a difference. Time for the type of serious training and continuing education professionals need is often something we try to squeeze in on the side. Kinda like your exercise and maybe dinner.

What’s the answer?

Pretty much I’m proposing that we treat training the way we treat a vacation. Those of us who’ve figured out how to actually get our time off, know we need to have it on the calendar early – before the emergency project comes up. That’s so our managers can plan around it, which they can do… if it’s on the calendar.

So your professional training needs to go on the calendar. Your boss needs the details so she can plan around it. Just like a serious vacation, you need to know what you’re going to do and how much it will cost.

Also, you need to understand what you need to learn.

Because technology as a supporting role for business is simply table stakes now, interdisciplinary training along with technical training is going to be the new normal. You can’t come up with cool ways to add value to your business if you don’t know what your business partners are doing. You also can’t offer technical solutions that you don’t know how to build. Looks like us nerds are going to have to start planning in both business learning as well as technical skill development.

Once you know what you need to learn, and you’ve found a good way to learn it, either through a real-life project and online learning, or formal training, you’ll need to budget the time and the money. Just like a vacation. What? This doesn’t sound like fun?

Here’s the other thing. You should leave town – just like when you go on vacation. Try to hand over loose ends to a teammate, turn off your cell phone and put your out of office message on. You don’t have to literally leave town but if you can get your manager and team to treat you like you have – well, then, who wouldn’t want to take on training?

Sound good? Here’s how to make it real.

  1. Get your manager’s buy-in.
  2. Schedule your learning days, plan and fund your training.
  3. Don’t forget to include the certification test. Do the whole thing.
  4. Be a team player – offer to support your buddy’s training vacation too.
  5. Use the practice of learning days to create cross-training. It’s so much better to get called back for a production issue from your class than from your first post-pandemic trip. So get the team to try like crazy to solve issues without you… just like you’re on vacation. Then, if there’s something they need to brush up on, it’ll be clear and you won’t have to call in from the beach.

Once you’ve carved out time for learning, quality downtime so you can have free-thinking for innovation, time for vacation, and time to do focused work each day, you’re well on the way to be being a master carver, 2021 style.

And that? Is just what we trained for.

If you want help getting your calendar under control, set up a free 25-minute session. I’d love to talk time management with you. After all, it’s 2 pm on a Saturday and I’ve spent the morning enjoying a novel, I’ve put out a blog and I’ll be chillin’ watching the Super Bowl tomorrow.

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King Action and the Big To-Do

Back to Basics Folks. If your bias for action isn’t getting you to your goals, stop acting like you’re on a ridgeline with no bailout.

Look. I love to hike. I love to scramble and I love to get myself above tree-line and stay up there for as long as possible. I especially love to do that in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When I’m looking at the ridged buttresses of those gray peaks and imagining that I’ll be at the top of all that in less than a day, I feel insignificant and awestruck. When I’m at the top and looking back to where I started, I feel a great validation. Yes, I can. Yes, I did. And yes, in the face of nature, I’m tiny and amazing.

For a person like me, not athletic, not always in great shape, working a couple of sedentary jobs, there’s a certain bravery, or crazy, in getting out there and trying this stuff. I’m super aware of all the ways my body and I can fail each other. I’m aware of all the ways that nature is blind and uncaring. Storms walk across the ridges, temperatures plummet. So much of it is out of my control. All of it is out of my control. To get to the top and keep going, requires a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach, a strict focus on the here and now, attention to the next action, and faith in your map. What you don’t need is a bunch of emotions making you screw up.

In back-packing, as at work, the mental game can turn a series of actions you need to take into a endurance ridden, instestine twisting obstacle course. What’s the answer? Simple. Shove down those emotions and keep going. Afraid of heights? Keep your eyes firmly on the next rock and do not look out over the expanse of nothing to your left. Afraid of being fired? Keep your nose to the grindstone, watch your mouth, double check your work.

Basically, think of the next action you can take and get to it, no matter what.

Makes sense when you’re on a ridge, with no good bailout. When fifty-mile-per-hour winds drive rain into your face, force you to lurch forward, bent over, using your boots and hands, with your pack-cover reverberating like an oncoming train, being able to push down your emotions and get one more yard closer to safety, is a great skill.

When there’s a crisis at work, staying focused, clear-headed, and calm pays huge rewards. Just get the map, the plan of action, and take the next step. You can vent about it later. For now, action is king.

This all breaks down when there’s no action to take. Like the guy in his tent, wondering what the sounds outside are, or the desk-jockey wondering if his employer will be in business next quarter, sometimes there’s no clear action to take. In those cases, managing your thoughts and the emotions they create is a clear next step. It’s the action you can take to feel better. The action of rethinking. You consider your perspective and manage your thinking. You remind yourself that your food is in a bear canister. You acknowledge that you have done all you can to help your company.

Look, most of the time, backpacking is just a slog up a hill with a big weight on your back. You’re not in trouble and you’re not out of actions. But if you’re going to spend the next four hours going up an endless staircase, you’ll do better if your emotions aren’t working against you.

In the same way, most of the time, work is just work. More stuff to do. Death by a thousand documents.

That’s when your bias for action can kill you. Shoving our emotions aside, thinking our way out of our frustrations, doesn’t take us where we need to go. To thrive during the majority of our business lives, the skill of sitting with feelings reigns supreme.

Emotions are what drive us to act. Different emotions cause different actions. Before you can switch emotional states to get better action, you have acknowledge what you’re feeling. Bummer, huh? At work, I just resent this fact. I prefer to act, to shove down emotions. I don’t want to muck around with feelings that are less than flattering. I certainly don’t want to talk about them.

That’s different from my experience hiking. On the trail, it’s become natural. My favorite trails start at zero and head straight up, right from the trailhead. So I’ve learned that during the first half-hour of the hike, my mind will be doing everything in its power to get me to head back to the car. I’ll notice every little wrinkle in my socks, I’ll be hyper-aware of my heart rate and breathing. In short, I’ll be miserable. I’ve learned to hang around with that discomfort. The first half-hour of a tough hike is spent basically noticing my mind, acknowledging that yes, it’s uncomfortable out here. Yes, I’m breathing hard. Yes, the pack is heavy. It’s fine. It’s OK. This is a thankless activity. It’s not supposed to be fun. This is the way I’m going. I’ll turn around if I need to but for now, the trail sucks.

I don’t try to push away worries. That would be nuts. If something is wrong, I want to find out while I can still get back to the car. That’s just being responsible. I don’t want to talk myself out of things or cover up real issues. I want to know that my boots fit, I can carry my pack, my heart is working but not too hard. I want to respond to issues while I can.

I don’t want to underreact or overreact.

The only way to hit that sweet spot is to accept that I have feelings and allow them to be there.

Usually, when I acknowledge that the situation is difficult and uncomfortable, I start to settle in. Oh, we’re doing this uncomfortable thing that we’ve done before. Oh, that’s all it is.

At work, frustration over interruptions, feeling victimized by my schedule, feeling anxiety over distractions from the political or personal environment, shame over missed opportunities, or anger over mistakes is part of the deal. When I shove those feelings down, I invite problems. On a personal level, I make the job harder, I look for distractions to help me endure the effort of not feeling. Worse yet, I might be missing opportunities to mitigate issues. Just as refusing to recognize an uncomfortable boot makes you miss the chance to put on a blister block, refusing to acknowledge that you don’t, actually, want to work all night, can make you miss the chance to just reschedule that less important meeting. Before you can actually take the action of rescheduling, you have to know that you’re unhappy.

To know that, you have to notice your feelings. You might have to – gasp – stop working for a minute. Literally, a minute. Hang out there, with just your emotions for a minute. You won’t be able to swap war stories about it with your buddies, so there’s that. But you might just find that those feeling start to soften, to unwrap their own knots.

You might think: “I have a lot to do.” You might just push on working, not acknowledging the feeling of pressure against your solar-plexus. You might complain, or eat or drink or check your email. Now your work is more difficult and takes longer.

Or you could think: “I have a lot to do.” You notice that heavy weight. What is it? Resentment. I feel resentment. I feel resentment. It feels like a stone. I want to take action. I can hardly stand to sit with this resentment. It’s OK. I can spend a minute just here, recognizing the resentment. I can feel it. I feel resentment. It’s in my chest and my shoulders. My jaw is tight. It’s OK to feel it. I can bear it. This is what happens sometimes. Resentment. Nothing has gone wrong. I want to be with my child tonight. I don’t want to work late. Resentment.

Why bother with this exercise? Because over time, the resentment becomes subtler, you notice it quicker. You take responsibility for your feelings. You are literally – able to respond. You don’t have to overreact, throwing yourself to your office floor and pitching a fit. But you don’t have to underreact either, pretending you’re A-OK with giving up game night with your child so you can finish a report.

You can stop on the trail. Fix your boot.

You can look at your calendar and say no.

It’s so much easier to reschedule, to mitigate the issue, to accept the most recent draft of the report when you acknowledge the emotional cost.

The actions you take in response to all your feelings become more intentional. You start to understand – oh, that’s resentment. I need to stop and feel it. In that space, options open up for you. You begin to respond with skill. You adjust your pack, your shift your load. You prepare better next time, you care for yourself with more skill.

Here’s another thing. When a hiker acknowledges issues and responds, not by quitting and not by barreling on without thought, then she has what she needs. She remembers a map, turns back for forgotten water and then continues, prevents blisters, prevents injury. Then, nobody has to rescue her later, nobody has to traverse the mountains in the dark to save her. She is a responsible hiker.

When we take care of our own emotional needs at work, we’re like that competent backpacker. We don’t complain and make life harder for others, because we’ve acknowledged our feelings and take responsibility for them. We demonstrate solutions as we work to correct situations, empowering those around us to say no, and yes. Showing others that the work is tough, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but nothing has gone wrong. It can be done and done well without overreacting or underreacting.

All of that is amazingly productive and that’s not even the best part.

When you teach yourself to notice and sit with unwanted emotions, you also notice wanted feelings faster and more often.

On the trail, you look up, appreciate the warm breeze, of the brief section of good footing. At work you notice that you are focused and comfortable, that you like some of this stuff you slog through each day.

As you teach yourself to work with tough feelings, you also are training yourself to notice all your feelings. You notice impatience and validation. You notice frustration and fascination. Life starts to feel bigger, more vibrant. Better. You decide you’ll hike this trail again. You decide you are alright with the work on your schedule.

And that? Is a fine way get through the day.

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The Power of Stepping Back

My bank started charging to sort and count change- the results were unexpected.
Don’t want to read? Check out the audio with additional content and … a rock intro.

How are you?

That’s a real question. I’ve been diving into this for myself over the last few weeks. The answer for me is – not all that great. That’s saying a lot. I’m almost always in an optimistic place or on my way towards one. Still, my reaction to the current environment has taken a large toll on my physical and mental states. So, I’ve set out to fix that. Here’s what I learned.

Data matters.

I’m more susceptible to media than I thought.

Rolling your own change is amazing.

Several years back, I could bring a large box of change collected from around the house into my bank. The cashier would come around to the lobby, she’d unlock a machine, and I’d dump the contents of the box in. It would count the coins and the cashier would credit my account for the total. It was a chore and a bit of fun seeing the final result. I’ve mentioned before that I like money, right?

Then my bank issued a statement. They would take a percent of the total going forward.

Here’s a known fact. Humans hate to lose more than they want something new. That’s saying a lot because we love us some novelty. Straight on that.

So I reacted predictably. I stopped bringing my boxes of coins to the bank. To heck with them!

Ironically, I had a quart container of lose change in the back of my van at the time. What did I do with it?

Double irony! At the office ( you remember the office, right?) there was a table set up. People were collecting pocket change for charity. Fabulous! I had change. Pockets and pockets of it. So I went out to my car, dragged the tub inside and plunked it on the table. Problem solved. Take that banking industry!

Of course, the recipients probably poured it into a sorting machine that took a cut. D’OH! Curses! Foiled again!

What’s a frugal change radical to do? I plotted my next move while the change piled up in the laundry room, on the dressers and finally, became part of large collection in the guest room.

Then 2020 came. No more change, at least not hard charge.

Let me rephrase – no more coins.

Over the past holiday, I found myself wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart, trailing my husband through the stationary section, idly picking up notebooks while he mulled over the options for hanging files. My eye landed on a box of coin wrappers. Without much thought, I flipped it into the cart.

New years’ day I dragged it out to the kitchen table along with a large jar of coins. I opened the box. The wrappers were the kind designed for use in a sorting machine. I don’t own one.

I pondered this. I’d spent money for the wrappers. I was going to use valuable time to roll this change. I’d recently read “Time Smart” by Ashley Whillans so I was super aware that in my quest to save the surcharge from the bank, I was paying more for wrappers and in time than I was saving. What to do? Should I just say the heck with it?

Happily, I’m currently working my way through “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport. The value of quiet time, free from TV, podcast, or even Audible, was also front of mind for me. I find it fantastically humorous that I keep shutting this audiobook off in response to his arguments for mental quiet.

With his ideas in my mind, I started sorting, counting, and rolling the coins. After a while, I got a rhythm going. After a while, I noticed my breathing, the sun through the sliding glass doors, the quiet satisfaction of watching the rolls pile up. There were a lot of coins.

Time passed, my thoughts wandered to the books I’d been reading, memories of times when my husband and I were young and very poor. The joy of finding I’d saved sixty dollars in change – a king’s ransom at the time. Memories of where we were living and how good our life was. I thought about the fact that I’ve somehow become a saver when I believed I was a spendthrift.

My husband came into the kitchen. I showed him the pile of rolled change and went off to find more stashes. When I returned, crowing over a plastic cupful, he had pulled a chair in front of the refrigerator, dragged the garbage can over, and began to toss out expired condiments and unidentifiable leftovers. I returned to rolling coins. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him in the yellow light of the ‘fridge. As we worked, both sorting and organizing in our own way, we chatted.

We recalled memories of the old days; shared our thoughts about the future. In the new year’s quiet, we worked on low-value tasks that took time but not effort. While 2020 sank further away and 2021 rose before us, we came to easy agreements. We sorted through our future, keeping some goals, tossing others out, no longer meaningful in the wake of the fading year. We untangled plans that had seemed intractable when discussed over a hurried morning coffee as we rushed into our workdays. Now, as we sorted and selected vegetables and dimes in the quiet, we agreed on what to do next. Easily, thoughtfully, calmly.

Just like that, our way forward changed. Not a lot, just a little. Because we were alone, just the two of us. Fox News was not there. CNN was not there. Governors and Presidents were not in the room with us, shouting from the TV. Dr. House wasn’t there diagnosing us, and the Tiger King was a distant memory. I’d stripped Linkedin and Facebook from my phone, deleted all aspects of the attention economy, put timers on my email and apps, leaving me present in the kitchen with our coins and our future.

No podcasts.

No books.

Just chores, the dog and our own ideas.

More of this in 2021?

Yes, please.

And that? Is just my New Year’s resolution.

If you would like help sorting out the drama and organizing your thinking, sign up for a free session here. I can help you stop the mental chatter and get back to what matters. It would be my honor.

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Get Strong

Think this is the soft stuff? Think again.

If there’s one thing I wish for you at Christmas, it’s compassion. Yeah, I know you wanted to master Ruby on Rails or get that full-stack gaming developer position outside Portland, but hey, anybody can have that. This compassion thing is way, way cooler.

Not buying it? I get it. Concrete skills are marketable, way fun, and useful. Compassion is the soft stuff, the fluff. It doesn’t pay the bills and it doesn’t get you true creds.

Still, if there’s one thing I wish for you at Hanukkah, Kwanza, or Winter Solstice, it’s compassion. If there’s room for one more gift, I wish you generosity – generosity of spirit, of wallet, of time.

With those two skills, compassion and generosity, your life will never lack meaning or joy. I’m pretty sure you can’t say that about any coding language or new technology.

And yes, I do mean skills, because as any monk will tell you, both of these grow with practice.

I would love to help you experience the power of creating these in your life. You can sign up for free 25-minute session here… Free Session. No strings, no hard sell. At the end, I’ll ask you if you’re interested in signing up with me. You say yes or no. That’s it. No sweat.

Compassion is our innate ability to recognize suffering in others and the desire to help. Generosity is freely and frequently giving to others. To learn more about how compassion increases physical well being, check out this article. Basically, generosity gives us greater pleasure in life, compassion gives us less inflammation and longevity. Cool beans.

That urge to quell suffering isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not the soft stuff. No way. Compassion requires nerves of steel. That strength can yield big results at work.

In Fearless at Work, Micheal Carroll talks about viewing other people’s aggression as something separate from the individual. Rather than reacting to insults and threats, we can look through those behaviors and see the intent behind the behavior. Carroll isn’t advising this so that we can stay on the good side of a bully. He recommends taking the compassionate view so you can skillfully decide whether to “lend a hand, get out of the way, or end the confusion altogether.”

At work, this looks like keeping our cool when others are upset. It’s understanding and having sympathy for, the underlying situations and motivations that cause other people to lash out, to reply quickly and thoughtlessly, or to miscommunicate. Compassion is also holding people accountable, fairly, and thoughtfully, not allowing them to continue down a fruitless path. Compassion is the motivator for stepping back and shutting up when you have nothing to add. It’s the reason we step forward and speak up for the right things even when we’re scared. We do these difficult and sometimes frightening things because we see the suffering not doing so causes and we want to help.

That takes some serious mojo. Compassion is the only house big enough for that.

Compassion doesn’t just make us better work partners. It reduces our stress. Every minute we spend thinking about those around us, trying to lend a hand, is one less minute we focus on our own trials and tribulations. There is a world of suffering, an endless opportunity to help others and forget our own worries. Generosity of time shows us that we aren’t overwhelmed after all. Generosity of wallet proves that what we have is enough. Generosity of spirit gives others credit, support, and encouragement and in turn, we feel uplifted.

It’s almost impossible to help someone at your own expense. Every attempt just winds up back at your own feet, paying dividends that outstrip what you gave—everything you give boomerangs back.

In the biggest payback of all time, the more you practice compassion for others, the easier it is to have compassion for yourself. If you want more on that subject, click through and check out my blog – Mastering the Art of Self Compassion.

I hope you look back at this year and find achievements. I hope if you lost loved ones, your memories bring you more sweet nostalgia than tears. If you lost your job, or your business, I wish you a long list of strengths and skills, and the resilience to keep trying, to never give up. I wish you support and a hand up. I wish you friends, family, wildlife, and pets.

More than any of that, I wish you compassion.

And that? Is just the best I have to offer.

Namaste.

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Review This.

If self-reviews make you want to jump out a window shouting “Review This!”, you might want to approach them from a fresh perspective. My advice? Stop thinking about your boss.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button.

So, I, like, ran a search on self-reviews. My first hit told me that self-reviews make employees feel more engaged. Well. My team is pretty engaged in wishing that they didn’t have to do them, worrying about when they’ll find the time and fretting over figuring out what to put in which box on the form.

I filed that article under W for wackadoodle.

I don’t know about you, but for me, self-reviews feel like pure, unadulterated torture. I often start my work session by penning my resignation letter. Dear Boss – I’d rather quit than relive this year. Goodbye.

If we were only talking about 2020, you might understand this attitude. But I feel like that every year and I love my job.

So what’s going on?

The self-review hits so many triggers, it’s hard to know where to start. The fear of being judged, which is tied to the primal fear of being tossed out of the tribe is just the most obvious one. There’s the taboo against self-promoting behavior, also tied to the loss of tribe anxiety. Then there’s the fear of failure, of not having done the things on the list that was given to you at the start of the year. Fear of exposure – the fear of others realizing that you don’t actually know what those goals meant, where you fit into them, or how you did. Fear of losing something – status or money – based on your answers.

Once you’ve kicked your fears to the curb, there are expectations to deal with. Am I making the most of this opportunity to document my strengths? Is this going to affect my performance ranking? My raise? Does my family depend on me getting this right? Good God, Man! Why didn’t I start this a year ago? Beyond that, the resentment – I told them all of this last year and it got me no-where. Eventually, we get down to the sneaking suspicion that none of this actually means anything.

Finally, you’ve arrived at the truth.

Because if you’re in fear, expecting some huge result or bent out of shape by the futility of it all, your self-review will be meaningless.

Why?

Because the person the review has the biggest impact on – is you.

I’d like to offer this twist of logic. What if you approached your review as if you were writing it for yourself? I contend that you’re doing just that.

Your company is paying you to take a moment to self reflect. To look back on your work year and jot down some of the highlights. Things that you did well, that you enjoyed, that you’re proud of. Some of that stuff happened for all of us. Even if our biggest project imploded, there’s still something in there that went right. There’s still something you learned. So jot that down too.

Be specific. Isn’t that the basic Review 101 advice? It’s good to do not because you have to have exact percentages in order to bolster the case for your existence on the planet, but because we get better insights when we have precision of thought. Coaches understand that for clients to get insights, they need to pick a single situation and analyze what actually happened. It’s the same for self-reflection in business too.

Talk about what you did instead. Let’s face it. We all knew that a never before seen virus was due to arrive in 2020 and we set our company goals accordingly. Right? No! Even if there wasn’t pandemic, our business goals wouldn’t have been perfection anyway. You had goals, you hit some and you missed some. Talk about what you did.

Deliver the information in light of what you want.

You signed up for your current job. Why? What do you actually like to do? What do you want to do more of? This is your chance to highlight the things you’re best at, which are probably the things you like best. It’s a chance to remind yourself what you want out of work.

Look, you’ve met your boss, right?

So trust me, your manager knows you.

Your self-review isn’t a blind date. You don’t have to impress your boss with it. You already did the best you could at that for the last 52 weeks.

Your self-review is a chance to remind yourself that you actually did a hella-lot this year. It’s a chance to lay out what the heck you want out of work and let your manager in on the secret.

So relax. Get a cup of joe and enjoy doing a little self-reflection.

After all – it’s your review.

And that? Is just good to remember.

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Resilience and Emotions

Does a day at work leave you with the lyrics of The Animals biggest hit running through your mind? There’s a way outta that place.
Would you rather listen? Click the play button and I’ll read it to you. Enjoy!

Hello, world! Did you miss me? I took a two-week vacation from this blog because I needed a reset. I’m guessing that you probably do too.

There’s a certain rhythm to the work year, and right about now, we’ve had it. You’ve got projects you’re trying to shove through the door, reviews, holidays, and it’s all a hella-lot.

When clients in burn-out come to me, one of the first things we work on is remembering to stop. Last month, I stopped blogging on the weekends. The two-week delay is the result of me figuring out how to do this thing during the week.

What’s that? Bully for me? I hear ya. Stopping is great but our jobs often demand that we push on, do the long shifts, keep working through to deliver. That’s fine. That’s the nature of a lot of professional positions. Sometimes, we can’t “just stop”.

At some point, the weight of that relentless grind starts to take a toll on us.

That’s when we need a Big Reset.

A Big Reset is a way to get us back on the upside of our working life even when we can’t change our situation.

To accomplish a Big Reset, you’ll need two things – emotional awareness and a time affluent mindset.

Time affluence is the idea that you have all the time you need to do the things that bring meaning to your life, sufficient time to reflect, and time for leisure activities. When you have a time affluent mindset, you have a sense of time as valuable, and you’re less likely to spend time on unsatisfying activities. You’re also more willing to trade money for time, as in hiring someone else to shovel that driveway, mow that lawn, pick out your groceries, etc.

When you putting in serious hours at work, it’s pretty hard to feel time affluent. If your November was like mine, getting an eight hour night was a treat. It was get up and back on Zoom after that.

If you nodded your head, then I have a big NCIS slap to the head for you. That right there, is part of the problem. Turns out, when you tell yourself that you have no time, you’re already on the no-fun side of life.

To reset your perception of the time available to you try this – tell yourself that you have all the time you need for what matters most. For me, the mantra can trigger a calming response.

Another tactic is to do a true calculation. That’s what I did last week. A 24-hour day minus 8 hours to sleep leaves me with 16 hours. Even if I’m working twelve-hour days, I still have four hours. I sure as heck didn’t feel like I had four free hours a day. That sent me off looking at how I was spending those four hours. Turns out I was shredding them.

In Ashley Whillans’ new book ‘Time Smart’, she talks about the way our technology and distractions – emails, a quick google search, something on TV that catches our attention, a text from a friend, a quick phone call – fragment our leisure time into “confetti”.

To have a sense of more time, find ways to stop shredding your free time. A full hour spent doing a specific activity, without allowing yourself to be diverted is a sure fire way to act and feel more time affluent.

Another tactic to bring time affluence back into your world is to savor. Yes, savor. This morning, I had only one hour before I needed to start work. Normally, I get up three or four hours before my day job starts, but this week I’ve been working late. So, in that one hour, I changed my mindset. I still pulled on sweats and took the dog out for a much-shortened constitutional but while I was out there, I savored the feeling of the air on my face. I really looked at the bird feeders, noticed the birds waiting in the trees while I refilled their seeds. I smelled the air. I called my dog and when she came bounding over to me, I spent time with her. Not much, but I still threw her a party for coming when she was called. I doled out a couple of treats from my pocket, I praised her until she put her ears flat and ran in tight circles of canine joy, then we played a two minute game of tug. I made the most out of my ten minutes outside.

During a Big Reset – pay attention – decide to have a full hour break. Pay attention… enjoy what you do have – the soft rug under your feet, the brief minutes outside, the perfect English muffin you had for breakfast, and the achievements you and those around you deliver.

You’ll also need to expand your emotional vocabulary. I noticed an amazing I feeling that I really enjoy. It happens when I have a few things in a row to do, I know how to do them, I know what is needed to be done, and I’m so fully engaged that I’m firing on all cylinders. I gave this feeling a name – All Cylinders Firing. I love when I feel All Cylinders Firing. When I’m cooking, All Cylinders are Firing when I’m washing up pots and pans as the food is cooking, I’m putting away dishes while the microwave is going, I have my plate ready before the timer rings… I’m using every motion, fully engaged, and creating exactly what I want… a perfect egg sandwich and a clean kitchen. At work, this looks like firing off that email, keeping up the the important stuff, fitting work into the time allowed, with a slight smile and flying fingers.

Now I’m not saying you need to race around like a nut. The point isn’t for you to feel All Cylinders Firing. The point is … notice when you feel happy. Even on your busy days, even during the long grinds. What is it you actually are enjoying? The comradery of puzzle-solving? Do you just feel so grateful for the co-workers who are busting their butts with you? Do you love the feeling of putting up your feet on the couch while you clear out that in box? Notice these situations. Then find a more specific way to describe them than – good, happy, fun. Really notice, really define those moments. Without changing anything about your job, or the amount of time you have, you can figure out how to have more of the “I’m working but I love it anyway” moments, more of the “this is what I’m like when it’s good” feelings.

If you would like help doing a Big Reset – you can sign up for a free session with me – here.

We can’t change the situations we find ourselves in today. We can jumpstart a Big Reset by being time affluent – being upfront with how much time we do have, refusing to shred our time, and savoring the experiences available now. That Big Restart also includes noticing the moments that we enjoy even during the bustle of December and being hyper-precise with the naming of our experience so that we can find ways to add more of it into our days.

December can be a jam packed month. You might be working long hours.

You can still have a Big Reset.

And that? Is just good to know.

Do you subscribe to Eric Barker’s newsletter? You really should. He’s got a great one. My plan for this year tells me that the first Monday in December is “The Big Reset – How to notice and copy a feeling.” Ironically, Eric’s latest blog is a perfect dovetail. You can catch his blog here.

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Redux

Sometimes, you have to learn the same lessons over…. and over…. and over.

I made a mistake at work. It went on my permanent record. It happened because there was a tiger in my office.

Or at least, my brain thought there was a tiger. What really happened is that I misunderstood something. I thought our team needed to do one thing, but in truth, we were supposed to do something else. But that’s not what caused the trouble for me.

Trouble came when I let myself believe and behave as if that mistake was as dangerous to me as a tiger.

Our brains don’t differentiate between a tiger that can kill us and a social faux pas that could get us tossed off our social island. For most of our history, the two things amounted to the same result. Death.

So when I goofed up, I got scared. I treated a paper tiger as if it were a real tiger and overreacted. Not good. I got called out on my actions. Deserved.

When at work, I remind myself – these issues are paper tigers. They can’t kill me, but jumping out a window to escape them, just might.

I wrote that lesson down years ago. This week I was in a meeting and someone IM’d me “Paper Tigers!”

This weekend I reflected on Lesson 15 – Don’t Hide It & Lesson 25 – Paper Tigers.

I felt my blood pressure come down, I talked for hours to people I love about things that have nothing to do with tigers or policies.

I remembered that each of us is capable, resilient and that we have everything we need here and now, in this one minute we’re inhabiting.

I wish you all good fortune and prosperity. I wish you a pair of scissors. I wish you the tools you need to discern a paper tiger from the real thing.

And That? Is All I’ve Got For You Today.

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Come together?

Come together. Sometimes, those are hard words to choke down.

How are you today? It’s been an emotional weekend for all of us. Back in December of 2019, when I laid out the plan for this year’s blogs, I knew this Monday was going to be tough on a lot of us, tough on half of us. I knew I’d be blogging after a tense election, but I sure never imagined the scale of the emotions and the whole sorry mish-mash that was 2020.

So how are you today?

If you are one of my fellow Americans, I feel ya.

We are entering a new phase of the election cycle.

Those of us on the upside of this bare-knuckle fist-fight of an election aren’t off the hook. We don’t get to gloat. We don’t get to wag fingers and act like children. There is one truth that we all know: this government, by design, doesn’t allow any party to have its own way, all the time. So it behooves us to swing the door wide and to make it easy for everyone to shoulder their way back to the table.

Those of us who voted for the candidate that lost are struggling to get our minds around that. I have been on the losing end of many of these. I voted for Ross Pierrot. I voted for a lot of other guys who lost. After an election during which I backed runner up, there’s always that sense that something just went wrong. There’s the sense that we just need to check a few more things, that surely, this isn’t the way it ends.

It’s really hard to swallow. And then… out walks the other guy and all his followers and they’re saying stuff like “put aside your differences, work across the aisle.” They say – “It’s time to come together.”

Ouch. It really stings. It’s like ripping off a band-aid, like not getting the job, like not bringing the project over the finish line on time. You’re not healed yet, you want one more try, but it’s over. It feels unfinished and unrealistic. Maybe you recount all the ballots in Florida. Maybe you recount Michigan. You’re the one still sitting at the table, trying to see if the deck had fifty-two cards in it.

I’ve sat in my chair, arms folded, aggravated and disappointed, and listened to many politicians ask me to put aside my differences.

I didn’t want to.

I still had my own mind. There are 70 million Americans out there who still have their own minds today. The election didn’t change that, and that’s OK.

Come together.

Come together is the thing that we do in America which is as unique and rare as a planet with water, oxygen, and carbon life forms. Come together is the thing that sets us apart.

Come together is America showing the world how it’s done. We don’t take to the streets with guns. We don’t divide our nation into warring factions. We don’t behave like there’s no due process.

It doesn’t mean we’re all singing around a campfire, but it does mean that we respect our system of government and we believe in the dream that is America.

We use the systems handed down to us by our founding fathers – a group of mismatched, imperfect, and fallible individuals. Those imperfect beings managed by some miracle to be greater than the sum of their parts. They created this wacky and brilliant electoral college. They created three branches of government. They ceded the power of elections to the states so that no one group could ever rig an election. They penned the constitution. They? Were magic.

Turns out it wasn’t a one shot deal.

Together, we are always greater than each of us alone.

So this is it.

There’s the election – the bare facts of what happened; the situation we find ourselves in.

And there are your thoughts about the election.

These are not the same thing.

The election happened. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It just is.

There are dozens of thoughts you can have about it.

You get to pick some out, find one that helps. When I’m on the dust-kickin’, downtrodden side of the game, I like to think “Well, it’s just four years and they can’t wreck the whole thing in four years.”

That’s the beauty of our country. Because no matter who sits in the people’s house, they can’t wreck the whole thing in four years. It’s never happened. They can’t even wreck it in eight years. It’s a belief that we take on faith. Sometimes, it’s just a prayer.

If we think our democracy is in trouble, we’ll act like it is – and then? Well, it really will be.

If we believe that due process, checks and balances, and the resiliency of the country as a whole will prevail, we’ll act like we have rational options and faith in the future. And then? All those things will continue to be true.

If we believe our opponents are less than us, less honorable, less intelligent, less “right”, then we won’t honor them, and we will be dishonorable, we won’t consult them and we will miss what they have to contribute. We’ll act as if we’re always right, and that’s never right.

If we believe that we can not, should not and must not be divided, then we will create unity.

So this is it.

The situation is – we had a big election.

We get to decide what that means.

And that? Is it.

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Turn On Your Cameras

If you thought public speaking was terrible in 2019, try it now.

Apparently, there were a lot of people on the video call, but I couldn’t tell.  The little bar across the top showed a series of grey boxes with pairs of letters in them.  There were only three people I could see.   The whole thing was freakin’ me out.

I’d spent days preparing for the presentation.   I’d practiced over and over.  The problem was, my talk felt identical to the version I’d done by myself, except now I was expecting feedback.   There wasn’t going to be any.  I was swimming alone.

Now, I’m not sayin’ it was a bad experience. I had a great time. I hope I helped someone. I’m just surprised at how much I wanted feedback. When I was in the office every day and I had a chance to give a presentation like this, feedback wasn’t a big deal. Now that I’m basically isolated in my house for days at a time? A whole new ball game right there.

My brother had mentioned this facet of our new normal to me during a phone call, but I’d not really understood.  He said performing live music on Facebook wasn’t the same.   

“Uh-huh,” I said.  I flipped a page in a catalog.

“There’s no relationship with the audience,” he said.  He sounded bummed.

“Huh,”  I offered, opening a cabinet.  Were there any crackers in the house?

“It’s better than nothing,” he finished. “But it’s not the same.  There’s no feedback.”

I shook a box of Triscuits.  It was suspiciously light. “What?” I asked.

People need interaction with people.   We need feedback when we’re sharing information, taking risks, putting our art, or our ideas out there.   When we feel vulnerable, a friendly face means everything.  A smile, a gesture, heck, just knowing that anyone is paying attention is absolute gold right now.

When we first left the office and went home, I knew how much communication from leadership meant to me.  I was craving it.  So I decided to dress every day for work, to show up on camera, to have a daily team meeting so that everyone could see that our team hadn’t changed.  I wanted to be reliable, available.

Each day, we all get on the call for fifteen minutes, turn on our cameras, and see each other.  During the summer, our team started to see these daily meetings as inconvenient.  Several people wanted to stop them.  Last month, after seven months of holding firm, I asked if they wanted to change the schedule.  Nobody said yes.  Why? Who knows.  For myself, I  know that it matters to me to see my teammates.  I started out doing it for them.  Now, I’m grateful they do it for me.

So people – turn on your cameras. It’s not about you.  You might have no make-up on, maybe that ombre hair color is really four inches of gray roots, or you’ve found that a man-bun is working out for you at home.  You lost your zoom shirt. You’re working in the laundry room. 

It doesn’t matter. 

We’re not turning on our cameras so that the world can see us stylin’ seven months into a pandemic.  We’re turning on our cameras because someone on the call might be struggling with depression and need to see a friendly face.  We’re rocking the virtual backgrounds and facing our dislike of seeing our sorry-ass faces so that we can show up and give a smile to a person trying to collaborate with us. 

Turn on your camera.

Speak up in meetings.

Send a note afterward.

It’s not about you.

It’s about showing up for each other and not letting friends swim alone.

And that? Is just an easy thing to do.

If you’re suffering from overwhelm and would like to work with me, sign up for a free consultation. Let’s see if I can help. Schedule that here.

If you’re out of work, or working on the front lines and would like to see if coaching helps, it’s my honor to assist you for free. Schedule that here.

Heard about my 6 week course – Reboot your day job? – Find out more here.